Sunday, June 26, 2011

So Jacques Brownson
is named to lead a team composed of talent from three great Chicago
architectural firms to build the new Chicago Civic Center. Immediately, there are two problems. First, the purpose for which the
building is being constructed makes it nearly impossible to build it in a
conventional metal framework of supporting steel. And second, the half-lot that is part of the original
proposal is, in Brownson’s estimation, too small to allow for any room on the
lot other than the building itself.

The second problem
was easier to solve. Even though
it meant tearing down Henrici’s, the oldest restaurant in Chicago at the time,
the city condemned the buildings on Randolph Street between Clark and Dearborn.

The problem of
designing the building was a far more difficult one. Because the Chicago Building Code labeled the structure an assembly
building, it required the circulation of twice as much air as a normal office
building. What does that
mean? More duct work and bigger
ducts. There was already the problem
of supporting a building with so many courtrooms and assembly spaces, a design
which made it hard to move supporting columns through the interior of the
building without disrupting those spaces.
The air circulation problem was added to that.

Massive cruciform columns to support the87-foot spans on north & south sides (JWB, 2008)

Mr. Brownson and
the engineers huddled and did some figuring. If the span between columns was brought to eighty-seven or ninety feet,
then the trusses would have to be close to five feet in height. Trusses that impressive would provide
enough room between the structure and the ceilings of the courtrooms to thread
the air ducts and other mechanical equipment through the space.

Then came the call
from C. F. Murphy. He’s got John
Roche in his office, and Roche is saying that the structure can’t be built as
it is being designed. Big
problem. Charles F. Murphy started
out with Daniel Burnham’s firm as an executive assistant to Ernest Graham. He's seen the Big Guys of the profession work their magic. He's worked quite a lot of it himself.

The two men have
known each other their whole lives and one man speaks, the other man
listens.

By the time Jacques
Brownson gets there, both men are worked into a lather. Old Man Murphy doesn’t waste any
time. He says, “I want you to stop
work on the Civic Center project the way it’s going. Go back to a normal building. John Roche says that he can’t build it, that it can’t be
done. The spans are too big. He just can’t handle it, and it’s not
possible to build it.”

Brownson bought
some time by not arguing. Roche
went back to his engineers and checked the arithmetic. Eventually, the plan was
developed. Three eighty-seven foot
spans on the long side of the building with eighteen feet of space between
floors, six of that going for mechanical space. That dwarfs nearly all other office buildings in which the average
ceiling height is between eight and nine feet.

All of this done with a slide rule and a lot of figuring. The computer was still in its early stages of development and there were no applications that use what little computing power it had to architecture and structural engineering.

Trusses six feet tall help to stiffen the building (JWB, 2008)

About this time
Brownson made a trip to Indianapolis where he ended up having lunch with a
group of county commissioners who had just overseen the construction of a new
courthouse. One of them told him,
“You know, I worked with county commissioners and building boards and all of
this stuff. It’s really hard to
get them to make a decision on things. They’ll just run you from pillar to post, all kinds of tricks and stuff,
and you never get them to make a decision.”

“What do you do,”
Brownson asked.

“Get the
foundations in the ground. Then
they can’t back away.”

So into the ground
the caissons went. Paschen
Brothers oversaw the work, sinking caissons sixteen-feet in diameter all the
way to bedrock, one hundred six feet below ground. There was no turning back.

Sometime this week
. . . the final installment. The
project gets off the ground.

As was the case
with the first installment on the Richard J. Daley Center, the source of this
information is the transcript of Jacques Brownson’s interview with Betty J.
Blum, part of the Chicago Architects’ Oral History program at the Burnham and
Ryerson libraries, located at the Art Institute of Chicago.